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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

I’ve been following the DTV transition with mild disinterest. I thought I sort-of knew what was going on, but one thing I had completely missed is that the shuffle around of spectrum impacts the users of wireless mics.

Previous generations (i.e. the one I bought two years ago) use part of the television spectrum (698-806 MHz: referred to as the 700 MHz band) to transmit. But with the DTV transition, things have gotten moved about, and parts of that spectrum will soon be allocated to emergency services and other parts were sold off to AT&T and friends.

So, in theory, those wireless mic systems are illegal after February 2009. Now, it’s not clear what that really means in the short term. Manufacturers have brought out new systems. Your existing systems will continue to work; though it’s possible you’ll start experiencing more interference.

A friend who works at a broadcast station says they just went through all their gear, identifying equipment that they wouldn’t be able to use after the switch. Television stations have a slightly different relationship to the FCC though; they have licenses from the FCC to use certain spectrum, and have to be careful they don’t break any rules!

I was talking about this with another friend, and we agreed that individuals using the gear were unlikely to run afoul of authorities; most systems don’t transmit very powerful signals, so we’re more likely to be impacted by other users (like Verizon or EMT) than vice versa.

For me, I have to remember to pack the hard-wired lavaliere in the future incase of interference issues, and I guess start saving for a replacement.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

The cameras are slowly arriving in peoples hands, and more reports and sample images and clips are appearing.

Phil Holland has put up a review of the Canon 5D Mark II. He’s generally happy about it, noting that the image quality compares very favorably with his 1Ds Mark III. He finds the low light capabilities impressive and he's included some sample images and video. He notes the problems with adjusting and setting exposure settings in video mode, and suggests getting Nikon AI-s lenses and a lens adapter so that you can at least manually set the aperture!

Or, perhaps Canon will let you set things in a future upgrade. Or maybe we should just wait for the next camera?

There’s whispers of a “Black spot” issue that seems to occur in some cases when shooting bright highlights. Reportedly Canon is looking into it.

1. Setting to M mode. Use your hand to cover the lens, controlling the amount of light coming in. You will see the ISO going up and the aperture and shutter going down.

2. Remove your hand in bright light, you will see the ISO going down and the shutter going up quickly within 1 second. Press the AE lock "*" immediately. Because AE adjustment order is ISO, followed by shutter speed, followed by aperture, if you can press the AE lock within 1 second, you can lock the changing ISO, shutter, and aperture in certain values.

3. If you can set the timing by pressing AE lock, you can lock the exposure values you want. Combine with the control of light, you can get almost every exposure values you want. Just like controlling the exposure manually, although it may be troublesome.